On a number of occasions between late 2003 and mid-2005,
perpetrators engaged in various acts of vandalism expressing ethnic or
religious hatred. Most often they painted hostile graffiti and desecrated
cemeteries. In a majority of cases, the police failed to identify the
perpetrators.

Notable incidents in which the police did not identify the
perpetrators include:

Backi Monostor: On November 7, 2003, and the night of June 5 or in the early hours of June 6, 2004, unknown persons damaged the Catholic
cemetery in the mainly Croat-populated Backi Monostor. On November 7,
twenty-two tombstones were knocked down, and nineteen more on June 6. The
perpetrators have not been identified, but ethnic Croat youths may have been
responsible for the November 2003 incident.111

Djurdjevo: on an unspecified date during February or March,
2004, unknown perpetrators painted graffiti reading national minorities  out!
at the hamburger kiosk in the center of the village.

Coka: in mid-March 2004, unknown perpetrators painted the slogan
Get out of Serbia! and Serbian ultra-nationalistic acronym SSSS on the façade of a school in the town.112

Sombor: late on July 2 or in the early hours of July 3, 2004, unknown perpetrators knocked down eighteen tombstones at the Catholic
cemetery. Most of the tombstones belonged to Croats, but there were also those
commemorating Hungarians and Germans.113

Novi Sad: on July 15, 2004, unknown perpetrators wrote the words
Hey Hungarians, alright, a deep hole is awaiting you on the concrete fence of
a Hungarian-owned house in the Novi Sad neighborhood of Teleb.114

Negotin: on March 24, 2005, unknown persons scribbled
anti-Semitic graffiti on the façades of various buildings in Negotin, in
eastern Serbia. Some messages described equality among races as a Jewish
trap; others contained Nazi swastikas next to crossed out Jewish Stars of
David.115

Nis: on June 11, numerous anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim graffiti
appeared on the walls of several public building, including the towns
synagogue. The graffiti glorified the July 1995 genocide against Bosnian
Muslims in Srebrenica, requested expulsion of Turks (Muslims) from Serbia, and advocated death for the servants of Zionism.116

Belgrade: in early July 2005, unknown perpetrators scribbled
graffiti at billboards commemorating the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The graffiti expressed approval of the massacre of the
Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995. Only four of the twenty-eight
posters remained undamaged. The text of one graffito was Knife, wire,
Srebrenica.117
The slogan rhymes in Serbian (Noz, zica, Srebrenica) and refers to the
well-established fact that the hands of a number of Muslim victims were tied
with wire prior to their execution.

Belgrade, March 22, 2005: Minor Punishment in
Misdemeanor Proceedings

In the early morning of March 22, 2005, anti-Semitic posters and graffiti appeared at numerous locations in Belgrade. At the entrance
to the Jewish cemetery, the graffiti demanded that Jewish parasites be
expelled from Serbia and protested the Jewish yoke allegedly imposed upon Serbia. The posters that covered walls in the center of Belgrade contained invectives
against the independent television and radio station B92, with the name of
the station inscribed within the drawing of Star of David. The messages daubed
on the walls in the neighborhoods hosting the offices of the leading human rights
groups in Serbia  the Humanitarian Law Center and the Helsinki Committee for
Human Rights in Serbia  blamed the heads of these organizations for being
Jewish pawns and one for being an obedient servant of the Jewish world
order.118

The police arrested three suspects on the same day.119 The
three ranged between nineteen and twenty-one years of age. In spite of their
evident intent to incite to ethnic and religious hatred, the three adults were
charged only with a misdemeanor, for indecent, impudent, and ruthless
behavior (article 12(1) of the Misdemeanors Act). The Belgrade misdemeanor
judge sentenced each of the accused on March 23, 2004, to ten days imprisonment.120

On the night of May 29 or in the early hours of May 30,
2004, three minors and one eighteen-year old painted graffiti with hate
messages on façades of two Slovak houses, two churches belonging to Jehovahs
Witnesses and Nazarenes, and on a van owned by an ethnic Croat. The
perpetrators wrote A Sect! and German Ustashas! and painted Nazi swastikas
and stylized U letters  the latter symbol denoting Ustasha, the Croatian
allies of the Nazis in the World War II.121 The police reacted, in the words of a
prominent political representative of Stara Pazova Slovaks, amazingly fast and
efficient[ly],122
by arresting the perpetrators and resolving the case.

On September 28, 2004, the prosecutor in the nearby Sremska
Mitrovica charged the eighteen-year-old suspect with incitement to ethnic and
religious hatred (contrary article 134 of the Basic Penal Code). The prosecutor
also initiated an investigation against the three minors for the same crime.123 On
December 27, the district court in Sremska Mitrovica acquitted the adult defendant,
because the court considered the defendants role in the incident as limited to
driving the car, while other persons painted the graffiti.124 As of June 2005,
separate proceedings for violation of article 134 against the minors were still
ongoing.125

The approach of the prosecutor in the Stara Pazova case
should be illustrative for other courts in Vojvodina who deal with cases with
apparent ethnic or religious motivation. Rather than dismissing the incident as
young persons prank, the prosecutor considered it an offense capable of
generating ethnic and religious violence in a multiethnic area.126 The
messages and the symbols written on the façades clearly pointed at the
requisite intent for the offense of incitement to ethnic and religious hatred. Finally,
the prosecutor invoked article 134 in spite of the fact that two of the four
perpetrators are of the same ethnicity  Slovak and Croat  as the groups
targeted.127
As the prosecutor told Human Rights Watch, It is our stance that with facts
like these we should charge the perpetrators with incitement to hatred, and it
is for the court to make the final decision. Too often prosecutorial offices
have adopted an unnecessarily restrictive approach to cases where incitement is
apparent and opted for ordinary criminal charges.

[111]
According to the president of the local executive board, one Croatian student
told her parents, on the day before the November 2003 incident, that her
friends were to party in a house near the cemetery, and that there will be
some problems. Human Rights Watch interview with Zoran Miller, president of
Backi Monostor Local Community.

[117]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Andrej Nosov, July 10, 2005. Nosov
is the director of the nongovernmental organization Youth Initiative, which
erected the billboards in Belgrade. Other messages desecrating the posters
contained text such as There Will Be A Repetition, and Ratko Mladic (former
Bosnian Serb Army commander, indicted at the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia as the principal architect of the genocide).

[123]
District Public Prosecutor in Sremska Mitrovica, Memorandum to the National
Council of the Slovak National Minority in Serbia and Montenegro, November 19, 2004 (on file with Human Rights Watch).

[124]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Ratko Galecic, District Public
Prosecutor in Sremska Mitrovica, June 17, 2005. The courts reasoning is questionable, because the driver was evidently aware of the acts by his younger
friends, and thus acted as a co-perpetrator, or aider and abettor.

[126]
Ibid. About 7,000 Slovaks live in Stara Pazova. Human Rights Watch interview
with Jovan Tisma, then-president of Stara Pazova Municipal Assembly, July 28,
2004. The town population is 18,628. See official website of the Stara Pazova
municipality, at http://www.stara-pazova.org.yu/naselja.html.

[127]
Human Rights Watch interview with Ratko Galecic, District Public Prosecutor in
Sremska Mitrovica, January 24, 2005. The Slovak offender, the only adult among
the perpetrators, belongs to skinheads, groups of young people who
shave their heads and often engage in white-supremacist activities. Human
Rights Watch interview with Branislav Dragas, director of Radio Stara Pazova,
July 28, 2004.